Data Express 4.0 Keeps Test Data Free of Confidential Data

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Micro Focus has released of Micro Focus Data Express 4.0. The new product ensures complete security of existing data during critical data testing, eliminating the risk of non-compliance and data leakage. It is also now available on distributed environments, including Windows, Unix, and Linux, in addition to the mainframe.

Using production-derived data presents several challenges; it almost always contains confidential information such as names, addresses, and health or bank records. Although organizations’ security measures can protect this in live systems, non-production use (such as testing and training) can result in non-compliance with engineers and external outsourcers having unregulated access to sensitive data.

With such a wide number of laws and regulations currently in place (UK Data Protection Act, EU Data Directive, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and the raft of recent data breaches, enterprises are under increasing pressure to ensure they robust protect customer data and comply with data privacy legislation.

Another challenge with using production-derived data for testing is that the volumes are huge, making the testing process slow and unwieldy and inevitably more costly. Data Express 4.0 addresses both issues through its data masking and data subsetting capabilities. Data masking allows companies to rapidly build automated and repeatable testing processes in order to conceal the data in line with data privacy regulations and eliminate the risk of data breaches. Data subsetting significantly reduces test data size to typically less than 10% of the size of the original, making it more manageable and reducing both data storage costs and the amount of man and elapsed hours spent executing tests. Micro Focus is also launching its Quick Start Methodology, which greatly simplifies the implementation process and allows an enterprise to be up and running on Data Express 4.0 within 20 days.

Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus, said: “The only effective way to ensure your systems are still operating at full capacity after any change to the business is through live testing of existing data. However, with the amount of confidential information stored in IT systems and the current high profile of data breaches, it is essential that organizations do not leave themselves liable to a data leak. Data Express 4.0 ensures the security of organizations’ data, while improving the quality of business applications themselves. Now it is available across both mainframe and contemporary platforms, Data Express 4.0 turns testing into an asset rather than an impediment for all types of business.”